RunAnn PatchettBloomsbury, Rs 595Ann patchett’s fifth book Run begins with a death. Bernadette, wife of Boston lawyer Bernard Doyle, is dead, and her sisters have come to ask Doyle to return a family heirloom, a statue of the Virgin Mary that is meant to be passed down from one daughter to the next through generations. Bernadette had no daughters, only three sons. The first, Sullivan, is the biological son; the other two, Tip and Teddy, are adopted. But Doyle refuses to return the statue to his dead wife’s sisters, because it is now kept in the little boys’ room and the boys, who think that it is a statue of their dead mother, say a prayer to it every night. But Bernadette’s sisters aren’t convinced, because, “why should two adopted sons, two black adopted sons, own the statue that was meant to be passed down from redheaded mother to redheaded daughter?” Race, politics, religion, privilege, adoption, single parenting — these are the themes and issues that Patchett takes on in this new book, though not with complete success. At the heart of this beautifully, almost too beautifully, crafted novel is the story of how the lives of two families intersect in the course of 24 hours. Typical of a Patchett plot, it is difficult to summarise any part of it without giving away the whole. Even though his own political career has ended, Doyle still longs to be part of a meaningful political life in the country at least through his sons. He drags the unwilling Tip and Teddy to listen to a speech by Jesse Jackson. When they emerge from the hall it is snowing. Just as the scholarly Tip is getting into an argument with his father about carrying the added weight of his expectations, he nearly gets run over by an SUV — but a woman passing by on the street manages to push him to safety. The woman, Tennessee Moser, gets hit by the car instead, and gets whisked off to hospital. Her 11-year-old daughter Kenya, with no other place to go, comes home with the Doyles. Patchett’s prose is warm and affecting, even when she is writing about so many losses and so many deaths. Her characters are likeable, even lovable. The setting is lovely — a snowstorm in which even the snow is fresh and dry, not yet browned with litter and movement. But the neat structure of the plot, its gleaming elegance, leaves one with the feeling that there is something missing — because real life is profoundly messier than this. For death is not the only bringer of sadness — life itself, with its steady accumulation of small and great wrongs, small and great disappointments, has dark, bitter corners that find no place in Patchett’s singing prose. Patchett’s most successful novel, Bel Canto (2001), was a beautifully crafted tale about kidnappers and their hostages, the richness of art and the impoverishment of human life. The novel’s intricate details and rich texture made it work. Run is a slighter novel, easier in its solutions, and far less impressive in its plotting. There is one accident too many, one death too many; and the novel seems filled with nice people thinking nice thoughts, or at least feeling ashamed of themselves as soon as they begin to think anything insensitive. If only real life were as nice as this.
